[leps-talk] species and allopatry

[Michael Gochfeld]

"Johnson, Kurt" wrote:
> 
> I agree with all this....  However, the permutations are interesting, esp. when
> dealing with faunas represeand a paper done by me and a colleague
> working out the lectotypes and neotypes from the region that would be needed
> to sort it out was rejected at the advice of some reviewers (who were not
> taxonomists by the way, but ecologists) who didn't "see any point" to having
> lectotype and neotypes for the various regional names (which, it would seem,
> the Code would require as proper taxonomic procedure) because, get this,
> those neotype and lectotypes would make it difficult, in rapid ecological
> assessment, not to just call all these things the same (making it real easy
> and having "utility").

Once upon a time in college I fell under the tutelage of a Botany
Professor who was a wonderful field biologist and I took cryptogamic
botany with him (that's all NON-FLOWERING PLANTS).  I became a
passionate collector of fungi (no one has ever criticized mycologists,
as far as I know, and with the recent interest in indoor air and molds
it would have been a good profession---finally). 

Anyway I learned the necessary microscopic details to distinguish, for
example, Stereum fasciatum from Stereum lobatum, by the thickness of
some particular layer, and I even learned to distinguish a few closely
related species by spores.  But I was much too impatient with
microscopy, so I devised for my own purposes,
field-identification-"species" which obviously included various groups
within which the true species were essentially indistinguishable in the
field.  It served my purposes (fungus ecology) admirably, but as
mentioned above turned out not to be publishable.  

CONCLUSION: There's no reason why ecologists have to pay strict
attention to the latest revision at the specific level (but I really
like to know what taxon is being discussed and this is particularly true
for toxicology), as long as they define the membership of their
entities.  I certainly don't think that ecology should drive taxonomy.  

MIKE GOCHFELD

 
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